Will be Service Members and veterans. Thats at 8 00 p. M. Eastern tonight on msnbc, and nbc. Thats going to be important tv. As is this show and this does it for us on wednesday. Im alex witt does it for wednesday. Morning joe starts right now. Donald trump this weekend, as part of his new initiative to woo africanamerican voters visited the Great Faith Ministries Church in detroit and he said he was there to listen and i dont know what he was listening to. Based on his dancing, it clearly wasnt music. This is beautiful. Just enjoy. Look at him soaking it in. As uncomfortable as anyone could ever be. He is just trying to go with the flow, but it looks like hes protecting himself from a penalty kick. As white as that was, it is still only the second whitest thing that a republican
candidate for president has ever done by a long shot. Number one is still very much this. Who let the dogs out. Oh, my lord. Good morning, everybody. Its wednesday, september 7th. Morning has the morning off along with me, willie, i cant talk. Thats okay. Not the only one. Willie. Yes, maam. Do they still do sesame street with your kids . Were past sesame street but its still there. C is for cookie what is c in president ial politics . Msnbc contributor, manager editor of Bloomberg Politics and cohost of all due respect that airs at 6 00 on msnc. What does c mean . Coffee. And in washington, former Ted Cruz CampaignCommunications Director and now msnbc political trecter rick tyler joins us. My goodness. Well get to that story. What do you guys think the lead is . I think i know what it is. National security battle. Okay. What do you think the lead story is today, heilmann . Corruption. C ask for corruption. Matt lauer, thats going to be exciting. Tonight, right . Candidates forum. On nbc and msnc. Wealer have a lot of that on tomorrow. Look, theyre ready to go. Im thinking Mike Barnicle its s corruption. That would feed into my, if you asked me the question. The media, the press is a little off scale here in terms of
donald trump, basically gets a pass compared to the way that we hammer Hillary Clinton. Thats what im thinking and thats why were leading with that. Lets give her a pass. I think with Hillary Clinton you have a lot of what looks really bad, but, still, nothing that is connected. Dot to dot as much as this. And it is such a joke that donald trump is trying to lie his way out of this. And that people are eating it. So, were going to give you the story and you can decide. Donald trump continues to defend himself against claims that he donated 25,000 to a Group SupportingFlorida Attorney general pam bondy to sway her offices review of fraud allegations at Trump University. Of course, Trump University is considered a fraud to many. And that is a story within itself. Where a lot of people feel they were scammed into gietting mone
and getting very little in return. Yesterday bondy declared and this is rich. Pam bondy declared she will not be bullied by Hillary Clinton, take a look. I will not be Collateral Damage nor a woman bullied by hillary cllt. This is about her trying to deflect everything she did as secretary of state. Of course, i asked donald trump for a contribution. Thats not what this is about. She was saying he was under investigation by my office at the time and i knew about it. None of which is true. So, lets go through this, given what pam bondy just said because she is being bullied by a woman. I think she is about to be bullied by another woman right now. No, were good. Im just giving the facts and laying out the two lies. One by pam bondy and one by
donald trump. The donation was made four days after it announced that bondy said she was considering joining a new york state investigation into Trump University. You know what c is for . Coincidence. Thats what it is. C is for coincidence and pam being bullied. The donation violated political rules. Trump and his team also failed to disclose the gift to the irs instead reporting that the donation was given to an unrelated group with a similar name effectively obscuring the contributio contribution. Trump paid the 205,000 penalty imposed on his foundation by the irs for the errors. Therefore, admitting there was a error and also reimbursed the foundation the full amount from his personal account. Lovely. I guess in a way just saying dont investigate, ill
contribute to you. I wont investigate. Ill take your contribution. Quid pro quo. New york times reports that trump circumventing rules governing contributions and lobbying. In the 1990s the federal election fined trump for exceeding the annual limit on Campaign Contribution by over 47,000. In new york, the new York State Lobbying Commission imposed a 250,000 fine for trumps failing to disclose the full extent of his lobbying of state legislatures because he always says he donates to get things done. He donates to get things done. Im using his words. He does it to democrats and republicans. By the way, did you see the Dallas Morning News for the First Time Ever. Theyve always sort of endorsed republicans, saying that donald trump is a democrat. Just check that out. The Huffington Post reports
that in 2014 did you see that, halperin . First time since 1964. Since 64. They might know something we dont. We already know he is a democrat. So, the Huffington Post reports trump hosted a fundraiser for bondy who was facing a tough reelection campaign. Yesterday, Hillary Clinton demanded the details of the conversation in which bon the American People deserve to know what was said because, clearly, the attorney general did not proceed with the investigation. I got tickled the other day, who gives us money and what we spend on it. His foundation was recently fined by the government for actually paying out of the foundation. If you put money in a family foundation, you dont pay taxes on it because youre going to give it away, right . Like a political contribution. He made a political contribution to the attorney general of florida who at the time had her Office Investigating trump universi university. And mysteriously, the investigation vanished. The Trump Campaign yesterday clarified remarks trump made on monday denying any communication with bondi because there was communication with bondi. They talked. A trump spokesman told nbc news when he never spoke to bondi, he was referring to the investigation. Is he saying they didnt talk about the investigation but they talked . C is for conversation. C is for conversation. And recall. This is called a lie. And recall trump has long flaunted his use of political donations to buy influence. I give to many people. Before this, before two months
ago i was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, i give. When i need something from them two years later, three years later, i call them. They are there for me. Money talks. Dedo does anyone want to share . Lets have a sharing. Is this like the sesame street . Are we supposed to take anything from this campaign seriously. Everything out of trumps mouth is turned around. Hell release his tax returns. Health records, we have that story. If he doesnt want to, hell just change his mind. On this story, hes just changing the story. He was caught in a lie. Anybody want to share . This is a pretty clear line to follow. The possibility of an investigation. A 25,000 donation is made to the attorney general of florida. Decides not to join the investigation. Later Donald Trump Holds a fundraiser for that attorney general. Thats a pretty easy story for the public to grasp on to. As you put it in the proper context, his own words catch up to him here when he says, yeah, i give money to politicians so i can control them. This looks like a case of that. Mike barnicle, if this was Hillary Clinton because we are doing so many, and i have many questions about the emails, many concerns about how it looks. But i havent seen anything like this. Say this was Hillary Clinton. What would the Trump Campaign be doing . Of the cover age, at least from my reading of the coverage. Enough there in the Clinton Foundation and the emails and the home server and certainly to cover news stories. But the level of concentration on her errors, falsehoods, whatever you want to call it. In proportion to trumps errors, falsehoods, you cant compare the two. Trump has said in the past, as you showed, that he gave money to politicians. If he wants taput this to rest, he should put out all the documentation from his office. How did this contribution come to be made . Where is the paperwork and the memos and the emails hey, right now, lets give pam bondi some money improperly through our charity and put out all the internal emails from her office that talk about the decision to not be part of the litigation. Maybe theres no connection. But the onus is on them now. Oh, please. The onus is on them to explain why she didnt join the investigation and why he gave the contribution. Within the office of the state attorney general apaper trail, an email trail. In trumps office, too. Even an office not big on electronic communication, it is strange timing. They should explain it because, again, trump has bragged. This is what he did. This is what he did. He gave money to politicians in order to control their decisions
to get favorable results. You can see a timeline and a direct result of the money, which is what he says he does with money. He buys people off. He makes deals. And he got a deal to not be investigated in an area where he has a real weak spot. Thats Trump University. I have never seen a campaign and a family get more defensively than when you bring up Trump University because they have a weak spot there. Because there are people with stories of being scammed and of having being taken for a ride. People who are weak and suffering and want to build their lives getting scammed into giving money, thinking that they will grow and return and they dont. They get nothing out of it. It went completely unhinged on the mexican judge who is from ohio. Indiana. Indiana. There you go. Excuse me for that. Rick tyler, question, though. Mike barnicle brought up a good point. If this was Hillary Clinton,
blah, blah, blah. The Hillary Clinton story is big and it goes beyond Hillary Clinton. As of yesterday it was about the fbi and over the weekend it was about, you know, politics and ay and perhaps even the fbi getting caught up in sort of playing the game of politics and timing their investigation. And questionable tactics in terms of how they carried out their investigation into the whole email situation. And thats a big story. I dont think were doing enough of it, to be honest. I dont think were overly focusing on Hillary Clinton and knit picking. But i dont think weve done enough on exactly what a scam artist this candidate might be. And im talking about donald trump. Look, mika, i see these two stories unfolding sort of in parallel. Its a little ironic. First of all, giving a Campaign Contribution from a foundation is illegal. Right . Thats clearly illegal. Thats what happened. Thats what happened. They tried to clear it up. Donald trump tried to reimburse the foundation. Youre not supposed to do that. The candidate is supposed to give money back to the foundation and donald trump is supposed to give to the candidate. You cant reimburse for a donation theyve already given. Set that aside, i find it ironic that president clinton would stand up there and say that donald trump hides his contributions which may or may not be true. The Clinton Foundation has been known tahide their contributions and moreover president clinton who got on a plane in las vegas with Loretta Lynch before the secretary was or was not to be indicted. When you have which clintons say we have to know the conversation between pam bondi and donald trump, we also have taknow what the conversation was between Loretta Lynch and bill clinton. The point im making is that they both, neither one of them have credibility with making allegations against the other. Are you saying that unless we
know what happened in that conversation between pam bondi and donald trump, we dont know what happened here . Are you like leaving benefit of the doubt that the money swayed her . Again, its look with the clintons and with trump, particularly the clintons. Theres been a lot of smoke. The clintons have been smoking since before 1992. Far less gray area in this story. Right. No one ever finds a fire. A lot of smoke, no fire. In this latest trump. A lot of smoke, also. There dozen seem to be a fire. We dont know. We cant prove that the contribution or the fundraiser that he subsequently did was a direct result that she didnt join the lawsuit in trump universepy. We cant prove it at this point. We cant prove it. But were not stupid. The primaphasia case of whats laid out here. The trail here is much more damming, it seem tazme, than anything we have in terms of theClinton Foundation. Story about which i agree with you, we deserve scrutiny. Wae have all been critical of the foundation and critical of the clintons. But both of your points are totally correct. We all as a press core, we moved past Trump University. That was like a story that consumed two or three days. Where we talked about the fact that people who worked at Trump University have come out on the record and said it was all a giant scam and a huge fraud. We maybe want to go back and look at that story. I think well do that tomorrow and work on that today. Thank you. Lets also note that this story is another reason why donald trump has to release his tax returns. And why its in the Public Interest for us to see his tax returns. This is a taxrelated story. How did this come to the surface because he violated tax law by making this contribution from his family foundation. If this is just one that we know about. If we had access to Donald Trumps tax records, we might see a lot more things, but we might not. Why do we care about Donald Trumps taxes . This story is one reason why wae care about Donald Trumps taxes because it opens up the door to stories where clear corruption, something that verges on bribery is strongly suggested by the evidence that we have right now. Not proven, but strongly suggested. Mike barnicle, real quick. If you assume the office is run professionally and competently, there certainly has to be an email trail about the disposition of dropping any potential investigation into Trump University in florida. And, by the way, also some communication amongst her Campaign Team about how it came to get the contributiocontribut. You know, had she gotten on the phone with trump and how did that fundraiser get set up. When caught here just a few days ago, trump just blatantly lied about the whole thing. Well, yes, they actually did speak and did speak right around
the time that he spoke taher. Nuthing to see here, even though my boss just lied. Did not tell the truth to the American People. Pam bondis office said this case never made it to her desk. Lower level staffers who reviewed it and decided not to pursue it and she had nothing to do with the case. But she spoke to trump . Im telling you what their defense is. Shes being bullied. Fantastic. The issue here why both candidates are so distrusted. If thats the correct use of the term. Trust levels are so low. So, youre left with a decision to make on knowledge dedication to country, service and record. Which Hillary Clinton trumps trump 100 times over. But in terms of trust . Theres not a lot there. Knowledge, shes got him ten times over. Donald trump keeps going in on that question of trust. He zeroed in on the revelation from the fbi notes the one
released last week and particularly noting how clinton told the fbi she mistook the c in a document for a paragraph marking when it really stood for confidential. We cant have someone in the oval office who dozen understand the meaning of the word confidential or classified. She repeatedly told the country that she understood the chasified cychasify ed system and then she told she didnt know c meant confidential or classified in the documents she emailed. Well, then, thank god he does. Because thank god someone knows the difference. Tweeting on sunday lying Hillary Clinton told the fbi she did not know the c markings on the documents stood for classified. Thought the c stood for confidential, not classified. He doesnt know either. He used both in that sound bite. Is this a person you want running the country . Somebody as you watched them over the years you really believe will have the best interest in the country of mine when they sit in the oval office . Thats a good question. Still ahead on morning joe. A lot more things that start with the letter c. The chairman of the Foreign Relations committee senator bob corker joins us. Plus, a conv